Playstation 4

Patience is a viture

It's obvious Sony follows a six year pattern with the release of each new console. And with that being the case, it would seem 2012 the year of the Playstation 4. Not likely. Kazuo Hirai, the CEO of Sony, has said he wants to squeeze all the juice out of a console with a ten year lifecycle, so to date the Playstation 2 has depleted all of its time while the PS3 still has four years left. More evidence of a delayed Playstation 4 release can be seen with the new Playstation Move which will probably sustain this current generation until they've finalized a Playstation 4 battleplan. Even despite our short attention span, it seems we'll have to come to terms that with all the features companies pack into their consoles, next-gen systems will take longer to appear than in times past. With all the hype surrounding the Xbox 360 Slim, people may mistakenly think it's a next-gen console, but it's really just another sub-category in the 360 line of systems.

Credit: Michal Zacharzewski

The smallest game console ever!

So what new features will a Playstation 4 have once it's released? With the astronomical starting costs of the PS3 because of it's Blu-ray player functionality, people decided to go with the less expensive alternatives: the Xbox 360 and Wii. So will they continue supporting this format? Most likely, yes. Blu-ray players as a whole have been decreasing in price at a nice pace, it's not as big a deal now than it was back in 2006. Back then, LG sold a Blu-ray player for about $1,000, now you can find one for just $99. Pocket change. And with the Playstation 3 only capable of stereoscopic 3D games for 720p, it seems that a Playstation 4 console would want to expand into the 1080p arena. Other areas of improvement include the physical dimensions of the new console. Currently, the Playstation 3 is just a tad larger than the 360 Slim, but still weighs less. This is a competition, so even if it may not matter to most, they still may want a smaller Playstation 4 to add to their list of things they can boast about.

We got it good

The Playstation 3 is pretty much a multimedia headquarters, so really, it doesn't seem like they are any new features available to be added to a next-gen system. Honestly, all they can do is improve on the features they already have now. They've integrated movies and music into the system, they even have ways where you can organize your photos. You can video chat via PS Eye with friends and family, and you can even surf the web. All these aspects I'm sure they can improve on, the most being their browser XMB as it is really lacking. But other than that, all there is left to change is the style. And about the browser, we PS3 owners really shouldn't complain about that since we're getting it for free. We don't have to search frantically for free Xbox Live codes when our finances are looking tough.

Pretty pictures

Obviously when speaking of game consoles, games are an area that can be improved on. They would need to upgrade all the internal workings to make it prettier on the screen. The highest memory available for the PS3 is 320GB - the most of any game console. But even with that being the case, the PS3 isn't sufficiently using the memory it has. Compared to the Xbox, the Playstation 3 is a lot less developer friendly since most of the memory is used for all its operating system, leaving just a little for game developers to use. And that in-turn makes games less visually appealing than what you see on the Xbox 360 Slim.

Talk to yourself

In order to find out what other areas Sony can improve on you need to ask yourself some questions.What can't your Playstation 3 do that would make your life more entertaining? What avenues have yet to be ventured by the typical game console? Can it do your taxes? Can it be motorized? Will there be a waterproof version? These are all critical questions that need to be answered in order to have a better introduction than the current generation. It's been said that Sony cannot make any money with the PS3 because of the poor initial sales. So it might not be tricked out into the Swiss-army knife of game consoles, it'll just be a better version of the knife we got in 2006.